DRAGO TALKS 'UNTOUCHABLES'"I WORE A WHITE SUIT IN THE MOVIE BECAUSE WE THOUGHT OF HIM AS THE ANGEL OF DEATH"Owen Williams interviewed Billy Drago for a UK film magazine, where it was trimmed down to fit the magazine's space constraints. But Williams has posted the full interview at The Void, including a section in which Drago talks about his work on Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, in which he portrayed Frank Nitti. Here is that section:

[The Untouchables] was one of those films where even the things that went wrong went right. It was a difficult shoot in that it was period and we were actually shooting in the city so you have to periodise all those blocks. It was huge. And the studio didn’t know it was going to be a hit, and they actually called De Palma and shut it down. They said “okay we’ve seen the footage, you’ve got enough, we don’t want to spend any more money, that’s it, after the weekend you’re home”, and there were a whole load more scenes we were supposed to shoot.

That’s when they went and shot the Odessa Steps sequence in the train station, with a load of raw film stock that De Palma had stored up. That wasn’t even in the script. We were supposed to shoot at the race track and a lot of other stuff, and he said ‘We can’t shoot any of that stuff, so everybody pack up, but in the meantime I’m going to shoot my version of the Battleship Potemkin scene with all this film I’ve stolen’…

The first scene we shot was where the little kid gets blown up. So I’m outside waiting on the street where they’re lighting, and some older woman comes up with a little boy and asks for a picture, so I put my arm around the little boy and all that. And the next day in the newspaper I found that the picture was there! And the little boy was like Nitti’s great great grandson.

The guy who was my stand-in was the great grandson of a guy who’d had a Nitti contract out on him! And his grandfather had hidden out in the middle of Illinois until Nitti had died, and survived the hit. But even after that, he got ill and he was in the hospital, and the nurses complained about him because he was sleeping with a pistol under his pillow, because he was convinced he was still gonna get whacked!

I got to know the Nitti family. They still live in the Chicago area and they have grocery stores and businesses: regular businesses; they’re not mob connected anymore! They called the hotel where I was staying, which was the actual hotel that had been owned by Capone and Nitti during that period (in fact the very phone booth where Machine Gun Jack McGill was killed was right outside my door). I was down in the lobby and the concierge came over to say that the Nitti family would be by to pick me up at 8 o’clock. Nobody asked if I actually wanted to go… It was an offer I couldn’t refuse! But it would have been too interesting an adventure to turn down anyway. So at eight o’clock I’m down in the lobby and a limousine pulls up and a guy gets out and introduces himself as someone who works for the Nitti family, and we drove around every blues club in Chicago, and at every one it was like royalty had arrived. ‘The Nitti family is here!’ It was great fun but they were making me a little nervous because they gradually started treating me like I really was Frank Nitti. They made sure my back was to the wall so I could see everybody, and all the young Italian turks would come by to pay their respects, and they’d all say “Sooooo, playin’ Uncle Frank huh? Lookin’ good, lookin’ good…” It gave me a bit of an insight into what it would have been like and what had gone on…

They didn’t mind Frank being portrayed as such a villain; the legend is so big. They had to move Nitty’s grave several times because people kept digging it up to make sure he really was dead; they were so scared of him. Only the family knew where his grave was for a while. I wore a white suit in the movie because we thought of him as the angel of death. I talked to a very elderly gentleman once who’d been a policeman undercover, and he said that Nitti had found him out, and tied him up in a basement and put a gun in his mouth and waited to see if he would sweat. Nitti had a very famous saying: ‘I never killed a man who wasn’t afraid to die’. So if he’d sweated he would’ve been killed, but he didn’t so Nitti said ‘oh okay, he’s not afraid’ so he let him go.

BUSCEMI RECALLS 1987 UNTOUCHABLES AUDITIONWHILE ACCEPTING SAG AWARD FOR HIS WORK IN BOARDWALK EMPIREAt the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday (January 30th), Steve Buscemi was awarded outstanding male actor for a drama series for his work on HBO's Boardwalk Empire. According to the New York Daily News' Soraya Roberts, during his acceptance speech, Buscemi recalled auditioning for Brian De Palma in 1987. According to the article, Buscemi "thanked casting director Ellen Lewis 'for having faith after my awful audition 20-something years ago when she brought me in to see Brian De Palma.'" The Swan Archives' Ari caught Buscemi's acceptance speech, and describes what the actor said after bringing up his Untouchables audition: "What he said was that at his audition, he went 'yabbada yabbada yabbada... thank you...,' the implication being that he was so nervous (presumably from being in De Palma's presence) that he couldn't make his words come out straight." While at the podium, Buscemi also begged Martin Scorsese to come back and direct another episode of Boardwalk Empire. Scorsese is a producer and creator of the show, and directed the pilot episode.

SCORSESE ON STEADICAM SHOT IN UNTOUCHABLES(AN ADDENDUM TO LAST WEEK'S POST)Since last week's post about the steadicam shot in Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, and how he had wanted to try to make it one minute longer than the elaborate steadicam shot in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, I've located a bit from a Cahiers du Cinéma interview in which Scorsese discusses that Untouchables scene. In 1996, Cahiers du Cinéma celebrated its 500th issue by inviting Scorsese to guest-edit the issue, and devoting it to Scorsese's "passion for cinema." The translated interviews/essays were published in Projections 7, edited by John Boorman and Walter Donohue, in 1997. In the issue, Scorsese refers to De Palma as his "pal," and a member of his own extended family, which also includes, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jay Cocks, among others. Here is what Scorsese had to say in 1996 about De Palma as a filmmaker:

Brian is a great director. Nobody can interpret things visually like he does: telling a story through a lens. Take the scene in The Untouchables where Charles Martin Smith is shot in the elevator. Look at that steadycam shot; he's not just moving the camera to show you that we can go longer because we have the steadycam. Francis used to tell me, "Marty, we can start a shot and go up to the Empire State Building and come back down. Anybody can do it. You have to know how to move a camera a little bit, that's all." A lot of people use the steadycam and don't know what they're doing. What Brian does with it is tell the story, progressing the story within the shot. That's just one example. Then in Carlito's Way there's a scene entering a night-club and the camera tracks up. It's extraordinary, his visual interpretation. He deals with stories that enable him to do that sort of thing. So when you get a real De Palma picture like Raising Cain or Body Double, you're getting something really unique. He's provocative. He goes, "I'm going to do this again. Hitchcock did it - so what? Who cares? I'm doing it this way." Brian knows. We always talk about that together.

WISE GUYS: SCORSESE WANTED TO ONE-UP DE PALMABY GOING ONE-MINUTE LONGER WITH STEADICAM SHOT IN GOODFELLASGQ has posted an incredible oral history of the making of Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, which was released 20 years ago this week. 60 or so cast and crew members were interviewed for the article, including Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Michael Ballhaus, and Ray Liotta. In the following excerpt, Larry McConkey and others discuss filming the Copacabana shot. Illeana Douglas, who was dating Scorsese in those days, talks about how Scorsese wanted to one-up Brian De Palma by making the shot a minute longer than the long steadicam shot in The Untouchables. Here's the excerpt:

THE GREATEST, STEADIEST SHOT OF ALL TIME

Larry McConkey (Steadicam operator): The impression I had when Marty walked us through the Copacabana shot was that this is going to be the most boring, worst thing I've ever done. We're walking across the street, down the stairs, down a hallway, in the kitchen.... What is this shot about?

Douglas: They didn't know that the Copacabana tracking shot was going to be such a big deal. It wasn't like, "Okay, we're going to do the greatest Steadicam shot in history."

Kristi Zea (production designer): This was the mating dance. Henry's arrival into the Copa, the way he came in, and how the whole thing was designed to impress the hell out of Karen. You wanted the audience to be part of her being impressed.

Johnny "Cha Cha" Ciarcia (Batts's crew number one): Marty Scorsese was in trouble for extras, so one of the casting directors called me. I live on Mulberry Street. I know the whole world. I went and I made a deal for $10 a person. We had five busloads of people on Fifth Avenue for the Copa. I set it all up.

Zea: He wanted a long preamble before they get into the space. The Copa didn't have a long enough walk before they actually get into the nightclub. So we had to build a hallway, and we literally took the walls away while the camera was in motion, so that they were gone by the time Ray and Lorraine showed up in the main room. The delivery of the camera into that big space had to be done like a ballet. Henry is saying hi to everyone, everyone knew who he was. And then the table flies across the camera and lands smack dab in front of Henny Youngman, and suddenly there's champagne coming over courtesy of these other guys.

McConkey: Marty watches the first rehearsal, and the only thing he said was, "No, no! When the table comes in, it's got to fly in! I came here as a kid and I saw this!" They'd flip on a tablecloth, the lamp goes on top of it, somebody plugs it in, they put down the plates... It was like a magic act.

Douglas: I believe they only did like seven takes. I've been involved in Steadicam work where you literally work all day to achieve what Marty achieved in that shot.

Liotta: One take was because at the end of it, Henny Youngman forgot his joke.

Zea: "Take my wife..."

Ballhaus: He forgot his line that he had said about 2,000 times!

Douglas: Brian De Palma had just done this incredibly long Steadicam shot in The Untouchables, and Marty said it would be funny to try to do it one minute longer than De Palma's. The world perceives this as "Oh, the Copacabana scene!" But what it really is, is directors behind the scenes having fun fucking with each other.

MORRICONE RECEIVES POLAR MUSIC PRIZEEVENT IN STOCKHOLM CLOSES WITH SCREENING OF THE UNTOUCHABLESEnnio Morricone was awarded the 2010 Polar Music Prize (also referred to as the "Nobel Prize for Music") by the King of Sweden in a ceremony Monday at the Skandia Theater in Stockholm. The award is traditionally given to a composer and a pop musician every year, and this year's pop honor went to Bjork. According to Lupin The 4th, the evening concluded with a screening of Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, the film for which Morricone was nominated for an Oscar for composing the score. Morricone has also scored De Palma's Casualties Of War and Mission To Mars.

GARCIA ON HIS "JAMES COBURN" SCENEAND HOW DE PALMA TOLD HIM TO "FIGURE IT OUT"A couple of months ago, Aint It Cool's Capone interviewed Andy Garcia and asked him about his experience making Brian De Palma's The Untouchables. Garcia shared some interesting tidbits about his character's introduction within the film...

Garcia: Well, I remember my introduction scene in the movie where they come and recruit me was the last scene we shot in the film, if I remember correctly. And we started here like at the end of the summer, so by the time we got to that scene, it was snowing that day in Chicago, so it was like the beginning of Fall with early snow. It was very cold, and I always remember that scene, because it’s a scene, when I was a young man going to the cinema in the '60s I loved the movie THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, and THE UNTOUCHABLES is sort of a take on THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN in a way, which is a take off of THE SEVEN SAMURAI. So structurally, one guy going out to recruit a bunch of people to achieve this objective…I remember seeing THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and when James Coburn was introduced, who was the knife thrower remember?

Capone: Yeah.

Garcia: I said “Wow, what an entrance in the movie.” I think that’s the movie that made James Coburn and got him known as an actor. I remember as a child being so impressed by that scene and saying “I want to be that guy!” Being lost in that concept that was engrained in my mind, and my scene in THE UNTOUCHABLES is basically the James Coburn scene, there’s a gun and whatever and the sharp shooter instead of a knife, but it’s basically that scene.

IT "HADN'T FOUND ITS WAY INTO THE SCRIPT YET"Garcia also told Capone about his reaction when he found out he would be riding a horse in the film. It is interesting that De Palma already had storyboards for this sequence prior to it being added to the script...

Garcia: For some reason, I also remember the conceit I had… When we were in Montana. We went to Montana to shoot this horseback-riding thing.

Capone: The bootlegging sequence right on the Canadian border, right?

Garcia: Right, but when it got to Chicago, Brian [De Palma] took me into a room and had this whole thing storyboarded, but with stick figures. Those were his storyboards, like “Here’s the three shot…” And he says, “Well, I’m going to have you guys on horses,” and in the script there was nothing to do with horses, so I was like “Brian, my character has never been on a horse… This guy’s from the Southside of Chicago…” He looked at me and he said, “No, no, he’s an expert horseman” and I go “How is he an expert horseman?” He goes “Fuckin' figure it out.” I said “Oh, thanks." The guy’s from the Southside of Chicago, now he’s going to be an expert horseman.” [laughs]

It was something that he conceived that he wanted to have us on horses, and it’s something that he adapted in the script, but hadn’t found its way into the script yet, and so me as an actor was like “Oh God… First of all, I’ve got to get on a horse.” So I started taking lessons at this equestrian center here somewhere in town or nearby where it had like a ring, so I got on the horse and I told the costumers “Find me a tie pin or a lapel pin, something that has a horses head just so I can have some sort of connection to…” So I concocted this idea and did some research, there were some stables in a Chicago park here in the inner city that my father or my grandfather as an immigrant, he was like a stable boy and he took care of the stables. When I was a little kid, I would go visit him and I was helping him in the stables, and that's how I knew how to ride. So I had to concoct this whole backstory just to justify “How does this kid from Southside Chicago become an expert horseman?” Then I had two weeks to be an expert horseman.

Capone: There you go.

Garcia: [Laughs] So that’s my UNTOUCHABLES story. Then I just had to concentrate on not falling off when the horses were going 40 miles an hour.

"SUMMER SCENES WE LOVE" AT CINEMATICALMeanwhile, earlier today, Scott Weinberg at Cinematical posted a "Summer Scenes We Love" featuring, out of all the great scenes in the film, the opening credits for The Untouchables, which are, of course, simply the best.

MAMET TO PRESENT THE UNTOUCHABLES70mm PRINT, TAX DAY IN SANTA MONICADavid Mamet, who wrote the screenplay for Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, will be on hand to discuss the film April 15, as the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica presents the film in 70mm. The event begins at 7:30pm.(Thanks to Chuck!)

The above trailer for Kevin Smith's Cop Out (originally titled A Couple Of Dicks) features a nasty joke involving Robert De Niro and Kevin Costner in The Untouchables. Meanwhile, an ad for the film that ran on NBC Thursday night had Tracy Morgan, whose character in the film has a habit of using lines from movies to interrogate suspects, quotes a line from Scarface, and then hilariously mouths the word "Scarface" to his partner, played by Bruce Willis. (No word yet on a Bonfire Of The Vanities joke.) On a side note, De Palma's most recent film, Redacted, quotes a line from Kevin Smith's Clerks, when Rush, who has just found out that his unit will be forced to extend its tour of duty, exclaims, "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" Reno then replies, "None of us is supposed to be here," before Rush goes on a tirade about how they keep telling them they're going home tomorrow, but then telling them they have to stay.

DEEP INTO THE UNTOUCHABLESBLOGGER LOOKS AT TRAIN SEQUENCE; 2 BRITS DISCUSS FILMAt H i M i P o V, Randy Aitken has written a monster of an essay analyzing the train station sequence in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables with the good-humored belief that “the devil is in the details”—rhythms, numbers, shapes, and symbols. Randy’s essay is generously illustrated with screen grabs such as the one shown here at left. Below is an example in which Randy is riffing on the use of numbers and teamwork:

Regarding Stone and Ness in The Untouchables train station steps sequence, they are a team who start out together, split up and come together again to fight and triumph over adversity while standing at the threshold of a diagonal staircase in the climax of the train station sequence. In the final moments of this sequence, as the Bowtie Killer's right arm acts as a stranglehold while the left arm has a gun to the bookkeeper's head, he threatens to kill the bookkeeper unless they are both released from the standoff. He begins a count off starting at "one" with a pregnant pause. Ness commands Stone to "take him!" and he kills Bowtie and reduces that Capone pairing down to one. Stone finishes Bowtie's counting sentence by saying "two." The visual storytelling has shown architectural space being developed and explored and through editing, framing, and dialog we have been shown changes in shapes and the proximity of these elements and forms to communicate growth and advance the story.

The establishment of a deadly horizontal relationship of the bookkeeper's head caught in between an arm and a gun has changed into a new deadly horizontal relationship between Stone's gun and Bowtie's head.

The angle of the straight line has moved counterclockwise 90 degrees.

And at the end of the straight line is a circle that has become divided into life and death.

As Bowtie's head slips out of frame downwards, an artistic modern abstraction of bloody red color is in evidence. De Palma the artist has thrown some paint upon the canvas for the audience and the characters to admire and comprehend. Bowtie has been zeroed out and we have to decide if Mr. Average, middle-American bookkeeper likes being an art critic, and we wonder if we see ourselves or the character in the canvas that he is standing too close to.

This idea of a making a connection between a straight line and a circle attached to it literally or through implication can be seen in the climax of the basement in Psycho, as well as Burke's activities in Blow Out.

PODCAST DISCUSSIONMeanwhile, at Chin Stroker VS Punter, the two British men of the title discuss The Untouchables in-depth in a podcast that runs about 90 minutes.